


Only After Dark

by MooseFeels



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, References to self-harm, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 08:36:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've talked about this for a long time, and now, Castiel's finally going to be like Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It hurts.

It feels like all of Dean’s bites, where he’s biting and biting and it stings a little bit, but then something very real breaks inside of Castiel and then there’s this powerful, tight, stinging and a kind of floating, empty feeling.

He cries out a little bit, suddenly dizzy, and Dean’s head darts up from his thigh to look at him.

Dean is so pretty. Dean is always so pretty. Always this pretty. Dean has blondish hair and skin that’s dotted with freckles, indication of the time in his life where he lived and breathed and toiled in the sun. Dean has green eyes like lush green grass. Dean has full lips. Dean has white teeth. Dean has strong hands and strong muscles- a strong body that was built by years on a farm and changed subtly by whatever or whoever made him who he is now.

They don’t like to use the word.

“Hey,” Dean says, and his voice slips and his accent sneaks in. “Hey, babe, hey, how you doin’?” Midwestern farmboy. A little old-fashioned. Pretty backwater. Middle of nowhere.

“Hurts,” Castiel whimpers, and he hates himself for not being strong enough to take it quietly. He’s not strong like Dean is. Dean takes punches, Dean falls down. Dean watches people die around him, Dean sees his mother’s grave- Dean suffers and he takes it so bravely. All Castiel can do is drape his arms around Dean’s middle and hold him while Dean stands there.

Dean saved Castiel, once.

He reaches forward now and pushes Castiel’s hair out of his face. Castiel is sweating a little, he feels warm. “I know,” Dean whispers. “I know.” He swallows. His lips are red, Castiel knows, from his blood. From his blood that is feeding Dean and making him strong. “If you want me to go all the way though, it’s gotta hurt just a little more, okay, Cas? Just a little bit more. If you don’t I can clean you up, scratch this a little and take you to the hospital for shots and stitches-”

“All the way,” Castiel moans. “All the way. Like we agreed. I can do it.” He reaches out, and Dean takes his hand. Castiel doesn’t quite grip it, but he holds it. Safe. “I can be strong.”

Dean licks his lip and he nods. Once or twice, and then he leans back down.

Things hurt a lot for a little while longer, and then everything goes black.

 

His mouth throbs when he wakes up, with Dean’s hand sprawled over his belly, still nuzzled tight against his thigh.

There are two small scars there, two scars that will never go away.

Dean wakes as Castiel sits up, and he wipes at his eyes sunddenly and as he smiles it’s like there’s a whole new light in the world.

“My mouth,” Castiel grumbles, “my mouth is sore.”

Dean smiles a little more and nods a couple of times. He tugs off his t-shirt (which is a little red around the collar, anyway) and cocks his neck to the side. “D’you know how to find it?”

Castiel shakes his head and pulls his legs up to cross- the muscle still a little sore.

“It’s not hard, you just need some practice. Here, okay,” Dean says, coming up onto the bed. He takes Castiel’s hand gently and guides it to his neck. “So this is a lot easier on the living but I don’t know how much of that…” He lets his sentence dangle a moment.

Castiel shakes his head. “Only you,” he says softly. “You and...and pouches. Only you.”

Dean looks down a little bit, like he’s honored. He does that sometimes, like he can’t believe Castiel would want him or like him or love him. It breaks Castiel’s heart. “Okay,” he says. “So on me,” and he guides Castiel’s hand to a spot right under his jaw, “on me, it goes from here down a ways. We can find a picture for you, some science, if that makes you feel more safe.”

“I trust you,” Castiel says.

“Okay,” Dean repeats. “Okay.”

Castiel cups Dean’s face in his hands and he smells his skin. “Smell nice,” he murmurs. “Smell like cotton.” He presses his nose against that spot on his jaw and then tilts his head so he’s down a little bit and then he bites and then his teeth stop aching so badly and he feels the best he’s ever felt.

It doesn’t taste like blood anymore. It tastes like something else. It tastes like-

It tastes like worn sheets on a fall day. It tastes like heat of the sun left lingering on an ear of corn. It tastes like a house creaking from a dust storm. It tastes like the way a fist rings after a fight, tastes like a brother’s hair ruffled under his fingers, like falling in love with a car forty years younger than you are and music about fifty years younger than you are it tastes like-

Castiel pulls away and looks at Dean and cradles his face. He feels his own gaze soften immeasurably.

It tastes like getting to know him all over again.

It tastes like falling in love with him all over again.

“Dean,” he murmurs softly.

“Heya, Cas,” Dean answers, in his soft Kansas drawl.

They pack to leave town not soon after. Their lives have become dangerous, now, and complex. Dean and his brother can pass for adults here, but they all know Castiel is fifteen, just a hair shy of sixteen, here. He might pass for eighteen other places, when they can get him a good ID and good papers. He’ll always be ID’d though, he’ll always be carded and looked at, suspiciously. Castiel’s got a baby face and a soft body, and now...now he always will.

They tumble out of the cheap hotel room Dean rented and walk briskly into the woods, where Dean’s brother is waiting in their long black car. Dean is actually four years older than Sam, not that  you’d know to look. Not that four years really seem to matter that much, any more. Dean turned Sam a couple of years after himself, after Sam hit a mighty growth spurt and his hair grew out long and brown.

Sam looks at him a little differently, suddenly.

“Does he...does he seem to glow a little bit?” he asks.

Dean frowns and looks at Castiel. Castiel frowns and looks at himself.

He squints a little bit- he didn’t see it in the hotel room and it’s hard to see right now but there is...there is something. Something a little blue and a little strange. A little dangerous.

“He’s new,” Dean shrugs. “Maybe it’ll go away. We’ll figure it out.” He grins, looks at the dirt. “Looks like a dang halo.”

Castiel rolls his eyes. “Let’s go,” he says. “It’s the first day of the rest of my death.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Dean had the car windows tinted a long time ago. It’s not that they can’t be out in the light and day, it’s just that it hurts their eyes so damn much and there are so many other people. Good for driving, though, and good for letting Castiel finally sleep.

Dean switched out with Sammy at around noon, when Cas finally conked out, learning to tune out the hum of the engine and the road and the smell of the back seat and the new way his skin feels over his shoulders. He figures Cas might appreciate something a little more comfortable to lie on than glass and Sam might want to stretch his freak-of-nature legs a little bit.

Castiel looks a little different now. His cheeks look a little sharper. He looks a little stronger. Dean has a feeling that he’ll be mighty fast on his feet more than anything, though.

“We headed to Bobby’s?” Sam asks.

Dean nods and Castiel shifts in his sleep so that his pale face is towards Dean. He strokes Castiel’s face gently, and then Cas whimpers.

Dean knows the sound and he knows the feeling. He bites his thumb and slips it between Castiel’s lips, ignoring the worried look Sam is surely giving him.

“I had to drain him before the change,” Dean answers. “I’ve been a little wired from it, anyway. It’s fine.”

They don’t talk about that time in the seventies when Sam fell off the wagon.

They don’t talk about that time in the eighties Dean almost starved to death.

“Missouri might be willing to put us up,” Sam says.

Dean shakes his head. “I’m thinking straight on to the farm. Do a little work for Jody to get good papers for Cas and then set up with a job at a hospital again.”

Castiel’s new teeth are sharp against his skin and he suckles eagerly but gently. Like a baby.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Sam asks.

“Little late,” Dean answers.

Feeding always leaves Dean a little dizzy, so he lets his head rest back and the blood pour out of him and into Cas. Sweet, beautiful Cas.

 

Castiel wakes up with a warm feeling in his bones, like he’s been laying out in the sun for a long,long time but body deep. He blinks a few times and then notices Dean’s thumb in his mouth like a baby bottle, and then Castiel feels like he could blush, if he wanted to. If he still had the reflex.

Dean has fallen asleep with his mouth open, teeth out. Castiel brushes his tongue against his own canines. They’re smaller than Dean’s or Sam’s. They’re almost polite. Demure.

They look like baby teeth, but Castiel supposes he decided to be Dean’s baby for quite a while.

Sam opens the passenger door suddenly, and they look at each other.

“We’re here,” he says. “If you guys want to climb on out.”

Dean inhales sharply for a moment and then sits up. Castiel shifts so that most of his weight isn’t resting on Dean (his dead weight, he thinks) and Dean stretches and groans.

“Where are we?” Castiel asks.

“Bobby’s Farm,” Dean answers, smiling a little sadly.

The house is old and the land it’s on is uncultivated and overgrown. The windows are shuttered. Both doors are locked.

“Bobby was a friend of ours when we didn’t have much by way of friends at all,” Dean explains. “Left us the house because Dad had to sell the farm away and he knew we’d need somewhere to settle and hang up our spurs.” Dean pauses for a long moment, standing at the bottom of the steps, near the porch. “We offered, but he said no. He had his reasons.”

The inside of the house smells like dust and age and mildew and stale air. It smells like no one’s been in there for years and years. There are sheets on the old furniture and when Sam flicks a lightswitch, nothing happens.

“I’ll be by to power and water tomorrow,” he murmurs. “Get it all turned on.”

Dean holds Castiel’s hand, tight and close. “You wanna light a fire, angel?” he asks. “Get a little light in here?”

Castiel shakes his head. “Still feel fuzzy from driving,” he mutters. “Wanna lay down and sort out my head. I think...think I need to eat soon. Headachey.”

Dean frowns expressively. “Sam, can you help Cas get a room set up upstairs? I’ll see about rustlin’ us up some grub.”

Sam looks a little pained. “Dean-”

“Relax,” he interrupts. “It’s all closed this time of night and the cameras don’ catch us. I’ll be in and out and they won’t miss three pints of whatever they’ve got most of.”

Castiel doesn’t let go of his hand and he goes to leave the room, though, and Dean stops midstride to look at him. “Be careful,” Castiel breathes. “I just got forever with you, I don’t want to spend all of it on the run.”

Dean smiles a little, and there’s something like the boy he was ninety years ago inside of it. He leans forward and kisses Castiel contritely on the cheek. “Yes, dear,” he says, and then he trots off.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Dean leaves the house and Castiel feels like his feet have been knocked out from under him.

He stumbles backward and Sam catches him. Helps him back up.

“You okay?” He asks.

“Is it normal?” Castiel asks. “Is feeling this tired normal? I feel...I feel like all of my strings have been cut.”

Sam looks a little worried, a little pained. “I felt weird for my first few...months. You get used to it. I think you’re reacting to eating so much recycled blood, though.Trust me, when Dean brings you a fresh meal, you’ll feel a lot better.”

“Recycled?” Castiel asks.

Sam shrugs and helps him up the stairs. “Well, yeah,” he answers. “There was what he ate out of you and what you ate back. What’s in you right now isn’t fresh and doesn’t have a lot of energy value to it. I always feel better after a meal and Dean’s always less grumpy, too.”

The floor is dusty under their feet. The wallpaper brown and miscolored. Sam flicks a lightswitch out of habit, but nothing happens.

There’s a bed in the room and a desk and a lamp and a wardrobe, or at least their forms are clear under the white sheets that protect them from dust. Sam helps Castiel sit down on the bed and the mattress creaks underneath him.

Sam looks at the windows and nods. “I’m gonna draw the blackouts for you. You’re gonna be sensitive to sunlight for a little while. That’s stops, too, but we’ll get you some sunglasses.”

Castiel smiles at Sam a little weakly. “Thank you,” he murmurs. “You and Dean...taking such good care of me.”

Sam’s eyes scrape the ceiling as he shrugs. “Dean-I mean...Dean...other than me, you’re the only person Dean’s ever turned. He offered to Bobby but that didn’t work out- anyway, Dean keeps this in the family. And if Dean turned you, then you’re family. And family,” Sam pauses and bites his lip, showing just that edge of his own canine. His eyes drift down from the ceiling to Castiel’s face, serious. Awkward and strange but very serious. “Family takes care of family.”

This is more than an initiation. This is a warning.

If you hurt my brother, I will hurt you.

Castiel nods, slowly. Gravely.

“Take the sheet of that bed. I’ll see if the blankets aren’t totally moth eaten,” Sam says and stomps out of the room and down the hall.

* * *

 

Dean drives just to the edge of town and walks and runs the rest of the way.

Dean loves his car dearly. He’s loved her since he saw her in that lot in the early seventies, little more than forty years ago. He’s loved her black lines and big body and loud engine. She’s not a machine built for stealth, though, and that means Dean does a lot of walking and jogging and running on these recon missions. They’re meditative, in their way, and on this night, he has a lot to think about.

Dean’s never changed anyone other than Sammy before, and changing Sammy was a decision that came so naturally it hardly counts.

Dean met Castiel in that town in Illinois, though, and he knew that he wanted him for all eternity all to himself.

Dean had a slip of paper that said he’d picked up a GED in some other country a couple of years ago, some cooked up identity with military parents and Sam as his brother. Dean hasn’t gone to school since the Reagan administration, and Sam hasn’t gone to high school since then either. He didn’t have to be there, near the high school. Hell, he still  isn’t sure why he went home that way from the garage in the first place.

Dean can’t explain why he was driving there, and Castiel’s never asked.

Dean remembers meeting Castiel for the first time- the way he shrugged and dodged and flinched his way through conversation, the way he scraped and scrambled to keep his arms and legs hidden, the way he wanted to be as small as possible. The way the scent of blood on him was sharp and clear and fresh, constantly.

At first Dean thought that it had just been the smell of blood on Castiel, like some sort of weird perfume. Dean knows better now.

The glass of the clinic window crushes under his fist easily enough and then the door opens nice and easy. Nice thing about rural areas with rural clinics and rural blood banks, there aren’t any alarms and there’s rarely a camera. Dean’s careful to hug the shadows anyway.

He finds the storage in the back easily, grabs six packets (because the less frequently he comes in, the better). He tips some stuff over, he digs through a few desks, knocks over chairs and filing cabinets. It looks like a wild animal has been through here, but there’s nothing too badly damaged, nothing valuable at any rate.

Dean is sure to note the name of the clinic in the back of his mind so that they don’t knock it over again for a few months, and then he runs out of there.

The blood is in cold packets, and they chill his hands. They don’t heat up- Dean doesn’t have the body heat to transfer to them and the air outside is brisk and cool. October.

He tosses the food in a cooler in the trunk and drives through the town, dodging the side road that would take him near the clinic. He notes the diners and the libraries. The stores, the 24 convenience place. He drives through the town and then loops back onto the road that will take him home.

Castiel is waiting for him.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The sheets are dusty underneath him and a little cold, too, but it feels good to lie down and hunker close against the sun, which is rising.

Castiel guesses it must be around five in the morning when Dean comes into the room and adjusts the blackout curtains, stopping a little more of the sunlight.

It helps the squinty, headache feeling a little bit, and then Dean eases down on the bed next to him and says, “Hey, baby, can you eat a little for me? You’ll feel better for it, I promise.”

Dean pulls a bag out. “You can bite it if you want to,” he says. “Or I can get you a straw for the top. Your choice.”

Thinking of biting makes his teeth ache a little. Castiel takes the blood pouch weakly and bites into it. The bite is far more easy than on Dean’s skin, but it tastes different. It doesn’t taste active and clear like it did from Dean, and it doesn’t taste like him, either. It makes something inside of Castiel feel reassured and solid, though, and he eats a little bit and then lays back down.

Dean takes the pouch and finishes it off, stroking Castiel’s hair. “That’s my baby,” he murmurs. “I know it feels weird right now. I know. So strong.”

He climbs under the sheet and spoons right up close to Castiel, his broad chest and shoulders enveloping Castiel’s back. “I missed you,” he mutters, softly, so softly he’s not sure Dean heard him. “I missed you so much.”

“I know,” Dean answers. “I’m here, now, and maybe you’ll be strong enough for the next run? If not, I’ll make Sammy do it.” He nuzzles into Castiel’s neck, that space right where his skin meets his hair. “I’m not leaving you,” he whispers.

Castiel thinks about the first time Dean said that to him, his hand wrapping over his wrist and kissing his knuckles- a stranger and a little shy but so tender. Castiel doesn’t know if Dean was ever just a stranger. There’s always been something, those few months where he was in town and Castiel could see him, could watch him in his sunglasses in jacket. When Castiel would run by the garage in the early morning or late night and watch him work and swear and breathe.

That morning when Castiel’s ankle twisted underneath him, his hand slipped, and his sleeves hitched up.

Castiel’s dead now, he knows, but he also knows that if it weren’t for Dean, he’d be so much more dead. He’d be alone and broken, whether he’d starved himself to death or finally cut the life out of himself. He’d be gone.

What a strange savior Castiel found in Dean.

He’s larger now- Dean made him eat. He’s happier now- Dean took away the knives.

Castiel tries to curl closer into Dean at his back, wraps his fingers into Dean’s hand and drifts in the drowsy half-sleep of day.

Forever is a long time to love someone, but Castiel thinks it might be just long enough.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Castiel’s limbs are heavy over his body. Arm over his chest, fingertips stroking over his bicep. His nose is buried in his neck.

His eyes are closed, the black fringe of his eyelashes a line across his eyelids. Mouth slack in sleep. Baby teeth peeking out just barely.

Dean could be content to lay in bed all night and look at him. So beautiful and untroubled. Unworried.

This is a new look for him, and a good look for him. Castiel was running when Dean first met him, more that the movement, more than his body. Castiel was running and hiding and dying.

Dean never listened to all of the details. He knew they would make him so angry, so upset he would do something dangerous. He would make a decision he couldn’t undo.

An uncle. A beater.

Now Castiel isn’t running. He’s resting. He isn’t dying anymore either. He’ll never be dying again.

Dean turns to look at him better. Moonlight beats against the curtain but doesn’t make it inside. Dean sees him through the dark, which casts its own shadows. Darkness shows a kind of aura, a kind of tarnish or patina.

Castiel almost glows in the dark.

His eyes open slowly. He opens them wide and blinks a few times before his vision adjusts. It takes a while to get used to. Dean remembers it well.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel greets.

“Heya, Cas,” he answers. “You hungry, baby?”  
He nuzzles into the pillow, movement sleepy and jerky. “I could eat,” he answers. “Why, are you going out?”  
Dean leans just barely forward and ghosts over Castiel’s neck. He doesn’t bleed the same way now. He doesn’t taste the same. He tastes easier. Gentler. The panic in him is gone. He doesn’t taste stressed.

It’s wonderful.

“I wasn’t planning, but I could,” he replies. “Please, baby, let me know. Don’t want you hurting. I know it hurts, after a while. It’s the best way. Really.”

Castiel shifts, suddenly, his weight settling over Dean’s hips as he leans over him. Looks into his eyes as his dark hair flops over his face a little bit, like a halo. Gorgeous.

“People need it, Dean,” he answers. “I...it makes me feel so guilty. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did, angel,” he answers.

“Why didn’t I listen?” He moans. He leans forward, sharply, to peck Dean on the cheek.

Dean leans over and turns on a lamp. Castiel climbs off of him and they both throw on some clothes.

Dean knows, as he watches the way Castiel buckles his belt and runs his hands through his hair (messier now, freer now) that he has to eat. Today. Tonight. Whatever. Whenever.

“Come on. Put on some shoes, we’re going out,” Dean says.

“Why?” Castiel asks. “I can’t get splinters. I like the dirt under my feet. Let’s run.” He smiles, and his face lights up, brilliantly. He loves this part. He hates eating, but he loves his body. He loves the way it doesn’t fail him anymore. He was gone, one night, from dusk to dawn. When he came back, he had sand under his nails and the smell of the ocean on his skin. Five hundred miles and back to the pacific ocean from where they had been in Oregon. He slept for four days straight, and when he woke up, Dean had never seen him happier.

What they were had always felt like a trap to Dean. It felt like a curse. Like a chain.

To Cas, it is his liberation.

“I’m willing to run if you’re willing to hunt,” Dean answers. “You have to eat tonight, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

Castiel’s brow furrows ever so slightly and he sighs. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

They’re laughing and sprinting out of the door. No shoes. Just shirts and pants. Laughter like chimes in the night.

Dean was right, when he saw him. Castiel moves like a stream of water. Fluidly and evenly, correctly. He tears through the wood like a flash. Dean has trouble keeping up.

He stops, suddenly, scenting the air.

He looks down and says, softly, “There are hunters in the woods. Not us. People. Guns.”

Dean freezes too, and he can tell, suddenly, by the shape of the air that he’s right. They’re not just hunters, though. This is private property. They’re poachers.

Castiel growls and tears through the air.

“Cas!” Dean calls after him. “Cas, please!”

Dean tears after him, but he knows he won’t catch him. Not unless he wants to be caught.

“Goddamnit,” he mutters.

He sees footprints. He sees twisted guns. He sees torn bark. He eventually finds about four men, passed out in a pile next to a tree.

Dean runs ahead a little more and he finds him.

The deer has a bullet wound. It lays on its side. It is dying.

Castiel’s hands are on it. His gaze is in intense.

The animal is silent. It’s breath is slow, and it grows slower by the moment. It is not in distress. It is not struggling. Castiel’s slowing it, stunning it with just the power of his eyes.

The animal finally passes and Castiel stands. He looks at Dean.

“Tell me I can’t eat them,” he says. “Tell me I can’t. Tell me I won’t. Tell me I won’t. Tell me. Please. I’m hungry and I’m angry and I want- I want to.” His voice is quiet. Barely a whisper.

“You can’t eat them,” Dean answers. “You won’t, even though you want to. We can run back to the house and you can have the pouches or-”

“To not eat her would be a waste,” he interrupts. “And she cannot be a waste, Dean. She cannot have died in vain.”

“Okay,” Dean answers. “Okay.”

He watches as Castiel leans over. He watches as his teeth sink in. He watches as Castiel eats, his mouth becoming red.

When he pulls away, he wipes his lips on the sleeve of his shirt and nods. “Okay,” he says. “Please. Take me home. Please.”  
Dean carries him and they walk slowly back through the woods.

They are perhaps some of the smallest of the monsters here.

 


End file.
